EDITORIAL: Efforts to boost Downtown Gadsden draw recognition

Sunday

Sep 1, 2019 at 1:01 AM

We’ve often pointed out the current vibrancy of Gadsden’s downtown district. Drive down Broad Street or adjoining streets in the daytime and you’ll see plenty of retail and business activity. Make the same trip at night and you’ll see plenty of dining and entertainment activity.

The message in either setting will be clear: Downtown isn’t a “ghost town” like the local Eeyores who seem to enjoy doom and gloom used to bemoan, and the renovation work and landscaping that drew so many complaints from those who couldn’t see beyond the real-time inconvenience paid off in something quite attractive and useful, if not downright special.

Folks elsewhere have taken notice. Downtown Gadsden received six Awards of Excellence during Main Street Alabama’s recent aLABama Downtown Laboratory Conference in Decatur.

Main Street Alabama, based in Birmingham, is in its 10th year of promoting the Main Street model for community revitalization.

According to the Main Street America website, that model features a focused, deliberate path to revitalizing and strengthening the economy in a downtown or commercial district. The emphasis is on economic vitality (providing capital, incentives and other economic and financial tools to help new or existing businesses), design (enhancing unique physical and visual assets), promotion (presenting downtown as the community’s hub and center of economic activity) and organization (cultivating partnerships, community involvement and resources)

Gadsden’s honorees:

• Excellence in Adaptive Reuse (Non-Historic): The Venue at Coosa Landing, a City of Gadsden project that transformed an abandoned Kmart into a modern event center that is about to complete an enormously successful first year of operation, and figures to be a centerpiece of continued development along the Coosa River.

• Excellence in Building Design (Non-Historic): Roseland Developmental Homes LLC, for restoration of property at 430 Chestnut St. to its original look.

• Excellence in Economic Impact: Phillip Williams, for turning a building on Seventh Street that had been empty for years into a business space called the Ironwood District that has tenants in all but one of its slots.

• Excellence in Historic Rehabilitation: Life Insurance Company of Alabama, for restoring its building at the corner of Third and Broad Streets.

• Excellence in Public/Private Partnership: Downtown Gadsden Inc. purchased and the City of Gadsden installed LED rooftop lights on Broad Street’s buildings, enhancing the district’s appearance.

• Main Street Hero: Curlie DeRamus for his longtime support of Downtown Gadsden and the Main Street program, and his culinary and musical involvement with Musical Mondays, where people can enjoy free lunch and music during the summer months at the Water Wall next to the Pitman Theatre.

We congratulate the recipients on their honors — they aren’t just winners, they’re role models — and we thank them for their efforts to make Gadsden better.